FORT WORTH — Bruised and bloodied, searching for the strength to land one more punch, Texas Tech got off the mat on Saturday to deliver the most thrilling victory of this college football season.

Alex Torres caught an 8-yard touchdown pass from Seth Doege in the third overtime to lift the Red Raiders to a shocking 56-53 win against TCU inside Amon G. Carter Stadium, a victory that tested every ounce of the team’s resolve.

“It was unbelievable,” Torres said, “That game shows a great thing about our team. We’re going to fight together. We’re going to fight to the end.”

Needing a touchdown to win after holding TCU to a field goal to start the third overtime, Doege threaded the ball just over linebacker Kenny Cain and into the arms of Torres, who sold run at the line of scrimmage, then slid to the back of the end zone.

The veteran receiver called the moment surreal, as the Red Raiders sprinted onto the field to celebrate the incredible, walk-off-style win.

“Honestly, at that point, I had to have my mind right because I thought we still had to go another drive with these guys,” Torres said. “There’s no better feeling than coming in here and fighting with your brothers, your family, the guys you put so much work in with.”

The Red Raiders (6-1, 3-1 in Big 12 Conference) had to find every bit of fight they had to pull off their second straight Big 12 victory, their first such streak since 2009. Tech began the game with two consecutive three-and-outs. It began the second half with three.

When Tech finally came to life, it scored two quick fourth-quarter touchdowns to grab a 36-26 lead with only four minutes left.

The game appeared over. Then it wasn’t.

“I think guys were enjoying it a little too much when we got up by 10,” Tech inside receiver Austin Zouzalik said.

In fact, the heart-pounding excitement was only getting started. TCU quarterback Trevone Boykin, making his third career college start, hit LaDarius Brown on a 60-yard touchdown pass to cut the lead to 36-33 with 2:25 to go.

TCU (5-2, 2-2) failed to recover the ensuing onside kick, but its defense stopped Tech on its next two runs, bringing up a third-and-7. With a little more than two minutes left on the clock, Tech coach Tommy Tuberville elected to run the ball.

All the Horned Frogs did after stopping that play and forcing a punt was drive 56 yards on nine plays, spanning just more than a minute, and tie the game on the fifth Jaden Oberkrom’s school-record six field goals.

“If we had to do it over again, we would have thrown the ball a little bit more,” Tuberville said. “Knowing they’ve got two timeouts, we’ve got to get a first down. If we could do it over again, we probably would have opened it up.”

Somehow the game was headed to overtime, and the momentum was surging toward the home sideline with the wave of the purple-clad crowd.

The Red Raiders were stunned. But they weren’t done.

“You could tell on the sideline that nobody had any thought of losing this game,” said Doege, who threw a career-high seven touchdown passes, three of them in overtime. “No matter what hole we were in, we were always digging our way out of it.”

TCU needed just three plays to score a touchdown on its first overtime possession, an 8-yard touchdown to Josh Boyce from Boykin, who threw for 332 yards and four touchdowns.

“He impressed me,” Tech safety Cody Davis said of Boykin.

But the Red Raiders — who trailed 17-7 in the second quarter before scoring a pair of quick touchdowns, one aided by the recovery of a sneak onside kick — responded with a scoring drive of their own, culminating in a 6-yard pass to Eric Ward.

On its next drive, Tech went for the jugular.

Eric Stephens took the snap in the wildcat formation and pitched to Darrin Moore, who was coming across the line of scrimmage in motion. He tossed the ball back to Doege, who had lined outside as a receiver, and the senior found a wide-open Jakeem Grant for a 25-yard, first-play touchdown.

“We’ve been practicing that play for three weeks, and we never had a chance to use it,” Doege said. “Finally, we had the perfect opportunity to use it, and we executed it.”

The young Horned Frogs, who have played an FBS-leading 16 true freshmen this season, kept finding resolve of their own. Boykin hit B.J. Catalon on a perfectly executed screen pass to tie the game at 50 and force yet another extra session.

It was there that Tech’s bend-but-don’t-break defense — the Red Raiders yielded a season-high 516 yards — won its most important battle of the night, limiting TCU to four yards on its first three plays and forcing Oberkrom’s sixth field goal of the night.

“We tried to settle down the things we were doing and just play our base stuff,” Tech defensive coordinator Art Kaufman said of the third overtime series. “Cody Davis made the play on third down that forced the field goal.”

Tech quickly moved into position on the winning drive with a 17-yard pass from Doege — who completed 30 of 42 passes for 318 yards — to Moore. After an incompletion, Doege found Torres, the fifth-year senior who also caught a go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter, for the game-winning score.

For all the thrills they provided, the Red Raiders had to overcome lingering periods of listlessness, including a combined five three-and-outs to begin the first and third quarters. Their run game was virtually non-existent until Kenny Williams’ 47-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter. Before that score, Tech had only 20 yards on 21 carries. Meantime, the defense gave up yards in chunks.

But a Tech team that had plenty of chances to fold instead found a way to pull off the kind of win its fans have yearned for.

“We made a lot of mistakes,” Tuberville said. “But we’ve been working real hard for a game like this, winning a game when you don’t play your best. I think that’s the epitome of guys just finding a way. Finding a way to win on the road in overtime is very, very hard.”

The most dramatic game in college football this season was the highest-scoring affair in Amon G. Carter Stadium history, and it was the highest combined scoring total ever in a Tech game. It was also the first three-overtime game for both teams.

As the safety Davis put it, “It was one of the most emotionally taxing games I’ve ever been in.”

In his opening statement following the win, Tuberville told the media to save any questions about bowl eligibility. “We’re excited about it,” he said, but the Red Raiders, 5-7 finishers a season ago, have bigger dreams.

Tuberville didn’t see his team at its best Saturday, on offense or defense, but he did find out plenty about its resiliency on a warm October day in the Metroplex.

“We battled through a lot today,” Doege said. “It said a lot about our football team.”